The Astros are finally .500 but there’s ‘no sense of relief’

HOUSTON — Sixty-two days ago, Houston Astros manager Joe Espada gathered his teetering team inside the cramped visiting clubhouse at Wrigley Field. Espada earned his first ejection an hour or so earlier, exiting a lifeless loss because, in part, “I got tired of watching.”

Anyone with a stake in the Astros appreciated the argument. The team invented innumerable ways to lose, gagging some away, getting bludgeoned before the second inning of others and, on this day, offering no offensive resistance in a two-run setback that sunk its record to 12 games below .500.

No Astros team since 1969 had ever started 7-19, not even the three from the early 2010s that were designed to lose. This one harbored championship aspirations yet sat at a crossroads. Two games against the Colorado Rockies awaited in Mexico City. Pregame festivities akin to Opening Day delivered the clean slate this club craved.

Before arriving in Mexico City, Espada encouraged the Astros to forget everything about their excruciating 26-game start. Together, they established goals for the following two months.

“Play .500 baseball in May,” Espada explained, “and our goal in June was to be a .500 club.”

Winning twice in Mexico City stopped a spiral and offered a springboard for a 15-14 May.

Vanquishing those very same Rockies on Wednesday afternoon at Minute Maid Park put the Astros back in a position they’ve never worked so hard to reach. Eighty games into a grind unlike any this golden era has seen, Houston is finally .500.

The @Astros have won 7 straight and 26 of their last 41.

They are at .500 for the first time since this season. pic.twitter.com/3U7svuqU6l

— MLB (@MLB) June 26, 2024

“We’ve met those goals, those targets, but we have to keep going,” Espada said. “The guys have worked really hard to get to this point. It wasn’t easy the first couple weeks of the season, but I think we have turned things around. We have to keep going. There’s a lot of baseball left, but we’re playing our best right now.”

Houston is 33-21 since resetting its season in Mexico on April 27. Only two American League teams have better records across that span: the Cleveland Guardians and New York Yankees. The Astros have trimmed their AL West deficit to 4 1/2 games and were three back of the final AL wild-card spot heading into Wednesday night’s games.

A clubhouse with seven consecutive appearances in the ALCS has higher standards than securing a .500 record. Celebrating it Wednesday felt foolish, so very few inside did. Utilityman Mauricio Dubón called it “a first step.” Shortstop Jeremy Peña proclaimed, “You have to start somewhere.”

“There’s no sense of relief,” veteran setup man Ryan Pressly said. “This team expects to win. It’s nice to win series and get some sweeps and have a good homestand, but it’s all for nothing if you go back into your old, same ways. This is an opportunity to capitalize on some momentum, and this team knows how to do that. When you start getting content and you start getting comfortable, that’s when stuff starts to slide again.”

Houston did not win Wednesday’s game as much as the Rockies gave it away. The scoreboard showed three errors but could’ve included at least two more. Defenders threw to the wrong base and a lineup missing Elias Díaz, Charlie Blackmon and Kris Bryant took brutally uncompetitive at-bats.

Spencer Arrighetti's 10th K pic.twitter.com/m1D41yYGbo

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 26, 2024

The Astros acted as a championship contender should, continuing to crush a soft portion of their schedule while clawing back into contention. Seventeen of their past 20 games arrived against teams that entered the month under .500. Houston won 11 of them. A sweep of the Baltimore Orioles last weekend offered more hope that this isn’t just a mirage.

“I think every year a team has to find what that team does well. It’s different every year,” third baseman Alex Bregman said.

That it took the Astros this long to discover it can be frustrating. Whether they’ve found the real answer is a mystery. Pitching injuries have made it paramount for this club to improve its run production. Since the Mexico City series, Houston is averaging 4.9 runs per game.

Bregman has ballooned his OPS by 156 points throughout that period. A .590 slugging percentage across his past 100 at-bats has masked a prolonged absence from Kyle Tucker. Better execution with men on base — be it a sacrifice fly with the infield in or a groundball that advances a base runner — has helped the lineup not seem so top-heavy.

Houston is still operating with four healthy starting pitchers on its 40-man roster. Two of them, Ronel Blanco and Spencer Arrighetti, have never thrown more than 125 innings in a professional season.

Somehow, the rotation still boasts a 2.93 ERA since May 22, the best in baseball. Hunter Brown has a 2.20 ERA across his past 57 1/3 innings, a byproduct of his new sinker and surging confidence. Blanco boasts the sport’s sixth-lowest ERA and, in three weeks, should become baseball’s most unexpected All-Star.

“The pitching staff has thrown the ball really well,” Bregman said. “Guys are really developing their repertoire. Obviously, we’ve had a lot of injuries to guys who have been mainstays in our rotation for a long time, but the guys who are stepping up now are really figuring out what works for them at the big-league level.”

Arrighetti crossed the 65-inning threshold Wednesday while authoring the best outing of his brief big-league career. He struck out a career-high 10 batters, ravaging the Rockies lineup with velocity and aggression unseen across his other 13 starts.

Arrighetti threw a first-pitch strike to 20 of the 24 Rockies he faced. He touched 97.3 mph in the first inning — his hardest pitch as a major leaguer. Arrighetti’s four-seam fastball sat at 94.9 mph. It averaged 93.7 mph in every start preceding it.

“That was the best I’ve felt all year today,” Arrighetti said. “Some of the velos would probably say the same thing. I haven’t hit 97 all year, so I think I’m starting to hit a trend in the right direction. I feel great.”

Arrighetti had allowed 10 earned runs across 5 2/3 innings during his previous two starts. Whether Wednesday was a byproduct of facing a bad lineup or a true turning point is a legitimate question.

Even if it is the former, Houston has no choice but to keep pitching the rookie in pressure situations. Both Blanco and Brown have pitched like front-line starters to buoy this ravaged rotation, a trend the Astros must hope will continue.

Ace Justin Verlander is still not throwing and won’t accompany the team for the first leg of its upcoming road trip, turning his supposed short-term injured list stint into something longer. Who will start in his place Sunday is a mystery. Houston has exhausted its depth to a dire point.

“This is a team that fights through stuff — injuries, ups and downs, struggles — they stick to each other,” Espada said. “They fight. We don’t stop believing in each other. That’s what champions do. We have to keep it together and let this play out.”

The Astros aren’t about to apologize for seizing advantage of an easy schedule but must acknowledge that more menacing tasks are ahead. A 10-game road trip against the New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays and Minnesota Twins awaits.

“Are we happy that we’re playing good? Obviously. Everybody loves to win. But that doesn’t mean you get to take your foot off the gas anymore,” Pressly said. “You’re still down in the division 4 1/2 games. You have to go out there and keep winning, make up ground, whether you’re .500 or above .500. If you don’t win the division, it’s kind of all for naught.”

(Photo of Jeremy Peña and Jose Altuve: Erik Williams / USA Today)